


Pandora, Persephone, and Other Victims of Mythology

by thornmallow



Series: Tron: Apotheosis [2]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-17
Updated: 2012-03-17
Packaged: 2017-11-02 02:40:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thornmallow/pseuds/thornmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clu wins, Clu fixates on Quorra, Quorra endures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One of the first books that Quorra read out of Flynn’s collection was an anthology of Greek and Roman myths. She had no context for these stories; the encyclopedia entries on Greece and Italy were of little use. Those countries, like every other place in the real world, occupied a speculative part of Quorra’s mind; they floated, adrift, in the vast, dreaming well of her fantasies. She therefore understood each myth as a factual history of events, rather than as allegories for the suffering that ancient people could not explain. She later learned otherwise, but despite Flynn’s patient explanation, she continue to believe, privately, that these lands were full of snake-haired women, bright purple flowers that were once young boys, and goddesses who bathed in the moonlight. Flynn had admitted that he never got the chance to visit either place, so it was possible. For cycles upon cycles, she had hope of seeing the truth for herself.

But then the decisive moment arrived. Sam Flynn entered the Grid, and it seemed like all those cycles of hoping had not been spent in vain. They would preserve the Grid from Clu’s tyranny and Quorra would experience the world beyond at last; she would see the fields before harvest and hills thick with tiger lilies and lakes clear and still as mirrors.

Only one of those expectations came true, and even then only by half.

Now, as she ran down an alley in California with the Black Guards’ pounding footsteps in her ears, she recalled that old anthology. As she scrambled up a chain-link fence, as the concertina wire bit into her palms and scratched up her thighs, she thought of Pandora. 

The girl who opened the box.

Pandora watched helplessly as every conceivable evil leapt from the box and burrowed into the soul of the world, corrupting and damning its people eternally. The girl had no choice but to look on with horror as everything changed, seemingly within a matter of moments. 

Her wrists were bound. Her voice found no sympathetic ears.

The Black Guard tore apart the fence rather than bother with scaling it. The metal shrieked; the protesting sound crashed against every shutter and brick in the alley. No one opened a window. By this point, they knew better.

Quorra kept running. There was a rebel safe house in this area, she just had to make it there. The message slipped under the door to Clu’s quarters had instructed her to look for their sign, an obscure pattern of circuitry that they painted near their secret territories, visible only from a certain, precisely calculated angle. She worked furiously to keep track of the guards on her heels and the pavement in front of her face, scanning the sidewalk for any hint of the rebels’ insignia.

Quorra burst out of the other side of the alley, and saw it—the pattern, reflected dimly in the sheen of a puddle. The circuitry was painted across the wall directly above the puddle, in thin, blue lines that were barely visible against the dirty red masonry. Quorra touched the bricks, scratched the stone, muttered prayers from all the faiths she knew of, willed the wall to shift inward or reveal another message or something—

Then she looked left, and saw an unassuming, rust-colored door. She glanced around her—the Black Guard’s relentless, thudding march had faded, she must have lost them—and seized the door’s handle, pressing down. The door swung open, creaking, into the darkness.

Quorra stepped past the threshold, her heart rising, fluttering wildly against her chest.

“Hello?” she called, tentatively, her voice full of exhaustion and relief and hope.

Hope was the glittering spark that remained in Pandora’s box after the evils had taken their dark flight.

“I’m sure you enjoyed the exercise,” Clu said from beside her. His hand clamped down on her shoulder. “But I think it’s getting late, don’t you?”

Quorra shut her eyes. Her body felt as cold and hard as the concrete floor.

She considered, for the first time, that nothing in Pandora’s box had meant good for the world.


	2. Chapter 2

“It was a trick,” she breathed.

“Not at all,” Clu said. “Well. Not entirely.” He flipped a switch with the hand that wasn’t digging craters into her shoulder. Light flooded the space, and Quora sucked in air sharply.

An extensive workstation occupied the far wall of the room. The desk was lined with numerous monitors, keyboards and towers; behind the desk was a vast corkboard with maps, notes and photographs tacked onto it. One photograph was of her, with her face circled in red. Others featured various cogs in Clu’s machine—loyal programs or Users targeted for assassination, the ones who managed the daily affairs of Clu’s expanding territories. 

Clu’s image was prominent on the corkboard as well; the picture of Quorra was taken at a public address he had given after establishing himself as a force that could not be denied or ignored. Quorra had stood beside him, expressionless and rigid, as he instructed the Users of Los Angeles to surrender to his seemingly endless and nigh-indestructible army. He had, of course, also choked their digital signals, wireless or otherwise, and effectively cut off and blacked out the city—nothing save for his own broadcasts got through.

That was the first day, which was nearly twenty cycles ago. Presently, Clu’s regime controlled the whole of North America, and it was advancing against the rest of the world with rapid, ruthless discipline. Rebellion spread in response, ostensibly led by Flynn and his son, Sam. But the Users no longer had control of the intricate, invisible streams of data that kept everything in their system functioning as it should. 

With access to the digital infrastructure cut off, the Users found it nearly impossible to mobilize. Even the vehicles—their planes and cars and tanks—ran with the help of a computer. This loss of power, combined with the sheer might and numbers that Clu brought with him through the portal, made victory an inevitable certainty.

Clu’s invasion had come upon the world like a volcanic eruption, leveling Flynn’s arcade, the block where it stood, and several more blocks in a twenty mile radius.

Quorra recoiled in disgust and fear when she was dragged out to see the smoldering ruin created by their exit from the Grid. Clu had laughed and spoke against her hair, holding her elbow in a vice grip. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix everything.”

He held her the same way now as then; his grip bruising, his blue-eyed expression pleasant, even kind. And though her fear had turned to endurance during the intervening time of her capture and this moment, she could still feel her pupils constricting, her eyes stretching wide at the scene before her, creating as much canvas for the carnage as possible.

The monitors were smoked out, cracked and smeared with blood. Bodies slumped over in chairs; others were on the ground in positions of futile defense—arms raised, fingers curled around the weapons that now lay in broken pieces beside them. The rebels had been bludgeoned to death and shot; some of their faces were barely recognizable as human. If any programs had counted themselves as part of this group, they were either already derezzed or, more likely, already repurposed.

“That note was real,” Clu said. “Successfully impersonating a sentry isn’t half-bad, but, between you and me, I found the rest of the execution a little underwhelming.”

He turned her around and the ugly mass of battered corpses and ruined equipment spun away, replaced by the empty, darkly shining streets. “I mean, trying to contact you through my room?” He laughed as though joking with an old friend. His hand slid from her shoulder down to her waist; he dug his thumb into the sensitive nerves there. She bit her lip to keep from shuddering. “He sent us an amateur.”

It was a foolish act, albeit brave to Quorra’s mind. Perhaps she, too, was foolish to accept that the plan outlined in the note would unfold so smoothly: guards disabled at the given time, surveillance interrupted, door codes jammed.

But these exquisite circumstances were all Clu’s doing.

A car pulled up as he led her outside of the building. Clu explained how he had caught the infiltrator as he held open the door, smiling, half-bowed, like a gentleman. Clu described the boy and what they had done to him.

Black Guards had materialized at either end of the otherwise deserted street, their circuits a menacing beacon. The block was utterly devoid of noise or activity—no lights in any of the windows, no dogs distantly barking, no hushed murmurs of televisions or phone conversations. For those few minutes of Clu’s presence, the apartments were vacant, the shops deserted. 

Quorra had nowhere to go. The double-edged sword of hope dropped from her hand and fell to the pavement, its clatter a harsh echo against the unnatural quiet.

She got into the car.

Clu, sitting next to her, brushed his fingers across her lips and said, “I wanted to see how far you would get.”


	3. Chapter 3

He wanted a horrified gasp, tensed muscles, miserable whimpers, a mouth abject with sorrow. He wanted her to flinch and shudder, to pull her body against his and feel the movement of her despair. And then he wanted her to give in.

Quorra was aware of that, now. In the initial stages of the invasion, she fought Clu whenever and however possible—she agitated him with taunts, she kicked and spat him and his guards, and she would attempt escape almost daily.

He loved this. One day she had realized it; she had seen his satisfaction in punishing her, correcting her. After the dominance was re-asserted, physically or verbally, there were the brief, unusual mercies. Running his fingers through her hair, massaging her back. Occasionally Clu brought her gifts: a diamond bracelet, each gem utterly flawless. Perfectly shaped roses that left their perfume lingering for a week after they wilted. And, once, a book—an old one, something called an illuminated manuscript, created in the Users’ early days. Its intricate illustrations, inlaid with gold and silver leaf, were so bright and shining that Quorra was surprised when the pages weren’t hot to the touch.

Clu allowed her to enjoy these treasures as a way, she suspected, of breaking down her resistance. He promised much more if she yielded willingly, if she would submit to his plans for her and the system they now occupied. If she would betray Kevin and Sam Flynn.

The car brought them back to Encom Tower, which now served as a central base of power for Clu’s regime. He kept Quorra there, in his rooms on the top floors, and stayed there himself when he wasn’t surveying a potential or captured territory from his ship. 

Quorra hadn’t spoken aloud, but her hands shook all the way to the tower’s front doors. For Clu, that was more than enough.

—

The table was set with all manner of earthly delights: veal cutlets rubbed with spices and crowned with mushrooms, sautéed and glistening; a basket of fresh bread, each steaming roll precisely in half and drizzled with butter. There were platters of artfully arranged fruit: plump grapes, ripe strawberries glittering with sugar, pomegranate sections filled with ruby-red seeds.

Quorra stared at the plate in front of her, which was piled with herb-encrusted potatoes, firm spears of asparagus, and a strip of sirloin that was coated with a dark, richly savory sauce. Beside her, a chocolate cheesecake beckoned from under a glass dome; it was decorated liberally with curls of chocolate ganache and comprised of two silken layers, one dark, one milk.

Quorra gripped her knife with such intensity that the handle became slick with sweat. The scent of this food—and she hadn’t even processed the soft, pale wheels of champagne cheese or the thickly sliced, lightly browned rashers of bacon—was overwhelming; it was a heady mix of aromatic spices, both salt and sweet, bursting with flavor and heat.

“Is this not to your liking?” Clu said. He sat across from her, in a gold high-backed chair padded with black leather; a little throne. “You worked so hard today. I thought you might appreciate something to eat.”

This was not usual. Quorra was terrified. 

Like all of their kind, she didn’t strictly require food to stay alive, and she did not often receive it. The energy flows were so strong in central Los Angeles that she didn’t need to drink it, either, though of course she could not decline when Clu offered one, lest she suffer the consequences. She could do hardly anything in his company without consequences, and that was why she knew not to trust the food.

Clu steepled his hands and watched her, smirking, his eyes reflecting steel and ice.

The pomegranate seeds glinted on their silver platter. The room had black walls run through with goldenrod tubing, and the otherworldly light they gave off was helped only by two crystal candelabras in the center of the table.

Having abandoned Pandora and her hope, Quorra looked at the seeds and found another myth surfacing in her memory. 

The king of the underworld spied a girl picking flowers: he pulled her onto his chariot and took her from the sunny grove where she sat, knotting the blossoms into a garland. The earth split open beneath his horses’ hooves and they descended to the dark, airless kingdom, to the land of the dead.

Once there, the king did not allow the girl to leave. No amount of intercession from her family swayed him, and when he was finally forced into a compromise, he still triumphed: the girl had eaten during her stay; she had tasted a pomegranate’s flesh and swallowed its seeds. Because of this, the king kept her for most of each year anyway.

Her name was Persephone, and she became known as the Iron Queen, though she was the daughter of a radiant summer goddess.

The story never discussed the girl’s thoughts on her situation; it seemed that she had little choice but to accept the circumstances. Quorra noticed that this was a theme in the book of myths.

She lifted the knife. Its serrated edge hovered over the seasoned meat, which smelled so warm and good, which she knew from a glance would cut easily, would melt tenderly on her tongue.

She looked up at Clu, and then she threw the knife.

He caught it nimbly. Lifting the napkin from his lap, he wiped a stray bit of sauce from the knife’s edge. He folded the napkin and set it back on the table, then laid down the knife.

“Oh, Q,” he said softly. “Poor decision.”

In one swift, violently abrupt motion, he pushed back from the chair and lunged for her.


	4. Chapter 4

He closed the distance between them in seconds, but Quorra was ready. She evaded his grasp, slipping off of her chair and ducking beneath the table. She scrambled to the opposite end of the room, rolling out from under the table and jumping to her feet before Clu re-adjusted his bearings. She had no disc and no baton, but she was fast.

“I don’t want anything you have to offer me,” she said.

“Now that hurts my feelings,” Clu said. “I’m sure the Users who slaved over dinner will be hurt, too. Especially considering that I told them they would die if you disliked their work.”

He loped towards her, and she took a step back.

“I’m sure it’s all wonderful,” she said, but her voice faltered. Never mind that Clu hardly needed a reason to derezz anyone, human or otherwise. Those poor people were dead from the moment Clu’s guards brought them to the tower. Still, his insinuation that Quorra could prevent the inevitable did unbalance her, if temporarily. That was all Clu needed, though—in the space between his words and her immediate, uncertain thoughts, he was in front of her again. His hands clamped down on her shoulders; his fingers carved into her collarbone like a sculptor with a chisel.

She gritted her teeth from the pain and felt a surge of rage. Clu laughed as Quorra wrenched away from him; the effort tore the straps on her dress and left livid, red marks on her pale skin. She grabbed the knife from the table and brandished it as she backed away from him, but her options were limited: the rectangular room was small, barely large enough to contain the table and chairs. The single door was sealed shut, and would only open on Clu’s command. Like the street, there was no escape.

Quorra didn’t care. Perhaps she should have eaten the food, complimented it, tried to ingratiate herself, been docile about her fate. Like the women in Flynn’s books.

“And what do you expect to do with that, Q?” Clu said. He wasn’t chasing her now so much as ambling leisurely after her, like a lion with a trapped gazelle.

“I don’t want to play this game,” she said. “You’ve had me prisoner for enough cycles. Let me go or derezz me!”

“But we’ve grown so close,” Clu said. He approached her without fear and seized her by the wrists. Shocked, she inhaled sharply as he applied pressure to the thin bones, causing her muscles to involuntarily spasm. She dropped the knife; it clattered to the marble floor.

“Look there,” he said. He held her in place with one hand as he bent to retrieve the knife. “Marble is a delicate material, and you’ve scratched it with your carelessness.”

Quorra tried to kick him, but he caught and held her leg up by the knee, then pressed the knife’s tip up beneath the joint.

“Maybe you should quit while you’re behind,” he said.

If she dropped her leg, she risked injury from the knife: it would pierce her kneecap and sever the joint, crippling her. Her back was to the wall—if she kicked him with her free leg, she might slip and fall on the knife regardless. Her left arm was pinned at the wrist, but what could she feasibly do with the right one? Nothing but punch, and hope the impact was enough to disrupt his equilibrium.

Quorra punched him in the side of the head.

Clu staggered back, at least partly out of surprise, and gave her enough room to use the wall as a springboard. She propelled her body into a flip, soaring over him and landing hard on the table; her heels smashed the porcelain fruit plate into jagged shards and the strawberries and pomegranate sections tumbled to the floor, oozing juice. The candelabras toppled as well, crashing loudly onto the marble, their wicks extinguished upon contact with the cold ground.

Quorra braced herself: Clu’s jovial pretense had evaporated, and he strode towards her with dark intent in his bright blue eyes.

Clu was tall and solidly built, but his body was Flynn’s body and Flynn had been Quorra’s sparring partner. She dodged Clu’s initial swing and jumped back over him, coming down in a crouching position. Before he could turn around, Quorra swept her leg and caught him; he hit the tiles with a satisfying crack. She set her stiletto heel against his throat, scowling.

She could crush his windpipe. She could watch him choke on his spit and flail helplessly in front of her. But when Quorra imagined Clu’s face contorted with agony, she only saw Flynn looking back at her, and she recoiled.

Something sharp scraped against her leg, and she realized that Clu had acquired a piece of the broken platter. Pain shot through her nerves as he peeled the skin from her calf. Her legs buckled, but Clu grabbed hold of her, pressing his fingers into the wound as he threw her off of him. She crashed against his gilded chair and slumped. 

Recovery came too late—he had her pinned down before her vision cleared. Still Quorra thrashed and fought, lashing out blindly with her fists. Clu growled. He straddled her, locked down her arms, and leaned over her.

“Hit me again, Quorra, and I’ll kill everyone else in this building.”

She paused. The tower had a full staff, comprised of humans and programs alike: guards, technicians, engineers, assistants to those groups, as well as janitors and maids and all manner of other attendants.

“Go on,” he said, his voice thick with venom. “Test me. They’re fodder.”

The energy drained from Quorra’s limbs. She felt watery, malleable. Her leg hurt. Her dress hung off of her shoulders, shredded at the neckline. She became still, and waited. 

For a moment, nothing passed between them, though Quorra sensed the angry tension in Clu’s taut muscles, his body heavy on her hips and arms as he loomed over her, keeping her immobilized. 

Without warning, he kissed her savagely, forcing his tongue past her lips and drawing her tongue out with his teeth. Her cry of protest died in his mouth, and Quorra trembled from the force of Clu’s hatred, his loneliness and frustration, his lust.


	5. Chapter 5

He tore at the ruined dress, ripped it away from her collar bone, exposing her bare breasts and the circuitry that ran over them.

He broke the kiss and dragged her to her feet by her hair; she flinched and stumbled against the table, rattling the cutlery.

“Pick up the chair,” he ordered, gesturing to where it lay on its side—she had knocked the thing over upon impact.

Quorra hesitated.

“I’ll start with the maid,” Clu said. “I’ll strip off every inch of her skin with one of these dinner knives. Have a look at what’s under there. Users have such messy, repulsive internal systems, don’t they?”

Quorra righted the chair.

He sat down in it and pulled her onto his lap, holding her tightly by the waist. She shifted uncomfortably.

“You wanted to eat,” he said. “This world and its filth enthralls you. Why resist me, Quorra? What do you gain from it?”

His words were warm breath against her hair. Quorra cringed, looked away. Clu caged her throat with his fingers, choking her, craning her neck back until she fixed her eyes on his. There was want in his expression, and disgust, too, though whether the latter was for her or for their surroundings, she couldn’t quite tell. A mixture of both, she guessed, though there was another emotion flickering in the sharp lines of his mouth, in the furrowed set of his brow and downcast eyes. Misery or longing or some unpleasant, roiling brew of the whole lot.

Clu ran his thumb over the thin, delicate skin of her throat. Ordinarily he wore gloves with his fine dark suits, but he always stripped them off when he came to her. He always touched her with his palms bare.

“I could give you everything,” he said.

Quorra trembled from the strain of being held so awkwardly; she wondered if she would lose consciousness, and hoped for it briefly. Of her thoughts, she betrayed nothing. Clu’s victory would not be total.

He let go of her neck and she lurched forward, coughing violently. Clu waited until the fit subsided, then pointed to one of the strawberries that remained on the table. “Let’s see what gives you such a thrill.”

She plucked it up between her nails.

His hands were on her thighs now, hiking up the skirt of her dress. As she turned to offer him the fruit, she felt the hard length of his cock pressed between her legs.

Quorra swallowed thickly. Clu parted his lips.

As she lifted the strawberry to his mouth, he thrust his hips upward, entering her roughly. She gasped, but he held her steady, with one arm around her waist and the other back to securing her neck. Any trace of softness or insecurity had vanished.

“Nnnh,” she whimpered as began a slow, agonizing rhythm. His grip was so tight that she could barely move, and he silenced her next outcry by forcing his forefinger down her throat.

Another insistent thrust and she sucked the finger helplessly, her tongue laving around the strip of circuitry that ran up to his knuckle.

He leaned forward after eating the strawberry. “Decent enough, though still an inefficient means of energy consumption,” he murmured against the hollow just under her chin. “Besides, I prefer other tastes.”

Clu bit down hard enough so that Quorra gasped, exhaling over the finger he still held against her tongue. Juice from the strawberry stained his lips; it smeared across her milk-pale skin as he licked the marks left by his teeth.

He slid his other hand down over her breasts and belly, making sure to stroke glowing, ice-blue pathways of her circuitry as he did so. His hand came to a rest just above her clit, which was exposed due to her folds stretching and thinning to accommodate his cock.

He continued to move inside her with deliberate, powerful thrusts as he massaged her clit, keeping her braced against him so as to contain her writhing and squirming. A film of tears blurred Quorra’s vision; she loathed him for this, and loathed herself more for reacting so easily and powerfully to his attentions. Her mind was awash in the pleasure and pain of it, too occupied to focus on any distractions—she tried to remember talking with Sam, verses of poetry, chess strategies—but in vain.

She could only hold to the needs of her traitorous body, to the rising arc of crackling sensation in her circuits. She moaned as Clu rubbed her clit between his fingers; she shook from the wave of euphoria this touch produced.

Suddenly, Clu withdrew his hands and pushed her unkindly down on the table, bending her over at the waist. Her cheek smashed against the wood; her chin dipped into puddles of cream and sauce from the disturbed plates of food. She groaned, but had no respite; Clu’s pace inside her increased rapidly, violently; her thighs shuddered from the force. Clu tangled his fingers in Quorra’s dark hair and pulled, lifting her head from the table just enough to ensure that she heard him speak.

“Lick it,” he hissed, and pushed her back down among the thin rivers of melted butter and lumps of mangled fruit.

“Do it,” he said, burying his cock as deeply into her pussy as he was able. Quorra breathed raggedly, tried to twist and squirm, but he was in her to the hilt. He raked his nails down her back. “Don’t make me wait, Q.”

Aching with shame, Quorra licked the table; she tasted grape flesh and a pomegranate seed, swimming in juice.

She swallowed, and he pulled back enough to thrust into her a final time. The building energy peaked and burst, exploding throughout both of their bodies.

Clu stayed where he was for another minute; he attended cruelly to the wounds his nails had left on her back, kissing the bloody tracks. Finally he released her, satiated.

Quorra slumped against the table, injured in every possible way, barely coherent. She felt him gather her into his arms.

She was limp, her will to resist spent. Clu carried her from the room and down the hall, and as her head lolled back against the crook of his elbow she caught sight of his face.

His smile was cold with malice, and Quorra realized that the punishment for her disobedience had not yet begun.


	6. Chapter 6

For a while, Quorra drifted. She was exhausted, and her systems were blinking in and out. They would shut down soon, albeit not permanently. She was never that lucky.

The transition from the Grid to the outside world had altered her physiology. Though she and the other programs retained their circuitry, their dependence on pure energy, and the prodigious speed and accuracy of their minds, their bodies now had veins full of hot blood. They had hearts and bones; lungs and cells needy for oxygen. Each program was, in effect, a cyborg—a strange hybrid of digital and organic properties. This state of affairs frustrated Clu. Fortunately, however, a certain key aspect of the programs’ makeup remained intact: the identity discs still functioned just as before, and they were subject to the same level of manipulation by anyone with enough knowledge to access them.

Furthermore, Clu had devised a procedure to integrate the disc and the unruly human population. The mandatory operation created a kind of port in the Users’ spines, thus establishing a pathway between their brains and the disc. It was a dangerous undertaking and many people in Clu’s territories had died from it, particularly the elderly and pre-adolescent. Clu viewed the risk as a bonus.

He had showed Quorra once, had brought her to a hospital so she could see how the thing was done. The patient was a boy around Sam’s age; he looked strong and vigorous despite his obvious fear over why he was there.

“One mistake,” Clu had said, as they stood behind glass and watched the boy be anesthetized, “and he won’t open his eyes again. These Users are more fragile than the most primitive line of code.”

The boy’s face went slack directly after the injection. Freckles dotted his cheeks and a ragged mop of sandy-blond hair fell over his eyes. He was lean and tall; his hands were calloused with small blisters. Something about him—the hair, perhaps, or the angular shape of his jaw, or even the little wounds that suggested a life of activity, of creation—reminded her of Sam.

Quorra exhaled, fogging the glass. “What’s his name?”

Clu’s attention had been on her from the start. Upon hearing the question, he took a step towards her and pressed his palm flat against the small of her back. She shuddered.

“Does it matter?” he said. “Do you care?”

She turned her head to look at him, but his expression was neutral—pleasant, even. Of course, that didn’t mean anything.

“It does,” she said. “I do.”

She felt a sharp, painful pressure on her back, right on the tailbone. She forced herself not to flinch.

“Jake,” Clu said softly. “His name is Jake Anderson.”

Jake Anderson survived the procedure. Clu and Quorra visited him while he recovered in his hospital bed, surrounded by his heavily freckled family.

“A-administrator,” the father stammered. “It’s, um, it’s an honor to meet you.”

The boy’s two little sisters—twins that Quorra guessed were no more than eight years old—hid behind their mother. The tall, slender woman kept her posture deferential, ensuring that the pale curtain of her hair obscured her steely expression.

“I wanted to congratulate your fine son on his survival,” Clu said. “How’re you feeling, kiddo?”

The boy was sluggish from his morphine drip, but Clu’s presence sliced through the haze; Jake’s dilated eyes were wide with terror. He had some measure of his wits, though, because he replied, “No worse than after a Saturday night dinner service, sir.”

His father laughed nervously. Quorra let a smile play at the corners of her mouth.

“Glad to hear it,” Clu said.

The girls stared at Quorra from behind their mother’s skirt. One of them said, tentatively, “You’re pretty.”

At this, Clu turned on his heel.

“Isn’t she, though?” he said, grinning at her darkly.

Her own smile fell away like a drape.

The people were well aware of Quorra, as Clu kept her by his side during public addresses. He treated her affectionately in front of them, holding her hand, occasionally kissing her. Kevin and Sam, wherever they were, saw these broadcasts, which was why Quorra tolerated Clu’s advances without complaint. The rebels didn’t need reminders of her suffering; they knew the truth. To everyone else, she was akin to Clu’s wife—a gross misreading of the situation that amused Clu endlessly.

“We should be going,” he said. “Anything you’d like to say, Q?”

Quorra looked at each member of the family in turn. They were frightened, tired, wary. Jake propped himself up by his elbows and met her gaze.

“Take care,” she said finally, quietly.

Clu linked his arm with hers. “Yes. Do take care.”

A week later, Quorra watched the boy die in the games. The crime that sent him there was trivial and likely falsified. Quorra didn’t bother to question Clu about it. A part of her had foreseen this outcome. The boy was finished from the second she had asked for his name.

That night, she wept for his loss, and Clu struck her. He held her fast by the chin and growled. “You waste your emotions. We were a tool to these Users, and now they despise us for doing as we were designed.”

“Because you have enslaved them,” she whispered.

“I have given them order. I have given them harmony.” His nails cut half-moons into her skin. “And what do you suppose they would make of you, ISO? Do you honestly believe they would think of you as a miracle if they knew the truth?”

Quorra stared back at him, unblinking. Flynn had spoken of his hopes for her during their exile, of the wondrous applications possible for her unique code. He seemed adamant that the User world would fully embrace her, once he explained what she was.

“Just as Flynn said,” Clu went on, as though knowing her mind, “you challenge their ideas about everything. Your very existence mocks their religion, their science! They would see you as you are—an aberration.”

“I could help them—” she managed, before he pushed her roughly onto the bed. With his face a hair’s breadth from hers, he whispered, “They don’t want to be helped. They just want to feel safe. And you …” He traced the circuitry patterns on her shoulders. “You are nothing safe.”

His weight bore down on her. She closed her eyes.

The memory broke with the sound of a Siren’s voice.


	7. Chapter 7

“This might sting a little, honey,” Solene said.

Quorra hissed through gritted teeth as Solene applied a bluish, translucent gel to her cuts and bruises. The burning cold spikes of pain were most acute across her calves, where Clu had stabbed her with the jagged porcelain shard. The gel quickly mended Quorra’s injuries, however: fresh skin knit over the bloody gashes in seconds. This medicine was a recent development, a fast-acting panacea capable of restoring all but the most grievous wounds.

The gel operated on a cellular level, stimulating rapid regrowth. The treatment wasn’t painless, but it was effective. Clu called it a gift to programs and Users alike, though he produced the gel in limited quantities and only a few were aware of how to engineer it. Quorra, of course, was privy to every ironic, excruciating detail.

“There you go,” Solene said. “Good as the day you were written. Or, er, emerged.”

Sirens appeared in Flynn’s books, too. They were women who lived in the ocean and sang to the ships of human men, drawing them to death on the rocks. The sirens were beautiful and merciless, not unlike the programs who bore their name, those designed to outfit gladiators for the games. Solene certainly looked the part, with her white and silver body armor and smoky, dark eyes. Her glossy hair curled around her ears and neck in tight black ringlets; her lips were full and pale. But her smile was bright with genuine warmth, and she spoke in a way that belied the cold, digital modulation of her voice. She performed her duties with as much mechanical precision as any of her sisters, though, which was probably how she had lasted for so long.

“Thank you,” Quorra murmured.

“Aw, it’s my pleasure,” Solene said. “I was wondering how you were holding up, sweetie. It’s been a while since I last saw you, though I expect that’s a good thing.”

Ordinarily, Solene worked in a similar capacity to the other Sirens, preparing condemned Users and programs for their trials in the Arena. Clu retained her to look after Quorra when she sustained too much damage from their interactions.

“I’m surviving,” Quorra said.

Solene smiled tightly. She touched the top of Quorra’s hair and replied, “That’s all we can ever do.”

She massaged more of the gel into the bruises and welts that marked Quorra’s neck and shoulders; the purplish, blood-gorged skin faded to creamy white as soon as it absorbed the medicine. Quorra sighed. She was on her stomach, naked, lying on an examining table. No part of her body was hidden from Solene, nor would it be from anyone else who entered the room. Of course, only one other program had access.

“How is it out there?” Quorra asked. She kept her gaze fixed on the white cushions beneath her chin. Her tone was neutral, nonchalant. This room, like every other room in the tower, was watched.

Solene’s response matched Quorra’s—even and free of inflection. “It’s not so bad. More fighters than ever, which keeps folks entertained. Haven’t seen anyone too interesting lately, though.”

“Interesting” was their code word for “familiar”—for example, someone who was part of the resistance.

“On the contrary,” Clu said. “I think the games tonight will be very interesting.”

Solene’s grip on Quorra’s arm tightened reflexively. The door had slid open while she spoke, and Clu took one stride to cross the room and stand beside her. She widened her smile and said, without a trace of nerves, “Of course, sir. I was only meaning to say that none of the recent gladiators impressed me.”

“True,” Clu murmured, his eyes roving over Quorra’s exposed body. “They are so rarely impressive. Have you finished here yet?”

“Almost, sir,” Solene said. “The, um, corrections needed are extensive.”

Clu picked up a tube of the panacea gel and then tucked it into his breast pocket. “I’ll take care of the rest. You have other work to do.”

Solene bowed her head. “Yes. As you say.”

She left, not daring to spare another glance at Quorra. For her part, Quorra was glad; she worried that Clu had heard and seen too much of their conversation already. His shadow cast a veil over her field of vision as he loomed over her, silent, still. She began to twist around on the table, but he slammed his open palm against her back, keeping her in place.

“I’m not done,” he said softly.

Clu wasn’t applying the gel. He wasn’t touching her at all aside from the hand between her shoulder blades. He was simply looking at her, though Quorra couldn’t discern why. Any curiosity or mystery about her body had ended that first night of her capture.

Several lacerations and livid bruises marred her calves and lower back; she wondered, disgust roiling in her gut, if he was admiring his work. Before she could let him know her opinion on this, he seized her underarms and flipped her over. 

Flat on her back, Quorra stared again into Clu’s eyes, expecting to find the cold, smug sadism glinting back at her. Whenever she later thought about this moment, she wished she had seen just that. Believing that Clu wholly despised her was easy, simple.

The emotions reflected in his startling blue eyes were neither easy nor simple. It was the same look he had given her back at the dinner table—something inscrutable in its mix of yearning, of searing desire, of sorrow and loss and pure, cold rage. Although obsessed with perfection and control, Clu existed as little more than a storm of messy, volatile feeling. He wanted constantly, and was constantly left wanting.

In the stark brightness of the room, this revelation struck Quorra like a hammer against plate glass. It was why she could not hate him. The truth went beyond Flynn’s teachings and his insistence that he was responsible for Clu’s actions.

This man who leaned over her, this fierce and unyielding beast, was a miserable creature. A neglected child endowed with the powers and responsibilities of a god.

Clu’s thumb massaged her ISO mark. Did he guess her thoughts?

They held each other’s gaze until he bent to kiss her, and that felt different, too.

The kiss was lingering, gentle; Quorra might have called it loving, though ‘needy’ felt more apt. He palmed her breasts, rubbing her nipples until they were hard between his fingers. She inhaled sharply, her back arching up from the table.

“Am I hurting you?” he said, so quietly that Quorra was disarmed; she responded “No,” without thinking, though he was hurting her, every day, every second.

Clu pressed his cheek against the ink-dark fall of her hair, kissed it, took in the scent. His fingers were splayed out over her breasts, warm and soft against her circuits, teasing the excited nipples. Quorra and Clu remained for a while in this position, entwined and immobile, as if they had been sculpted into it.

Then, abruptly, Clu pulled away from her. His energy had shifted, back to something certain, something ruthless. Conflicting influences seemed to swirl inside him like a maelstrom. Quorra couldn’t understand it, largely because she was exhausted from enduring it.

“Get up,” he said, voice like a glacier. “We don’t want to be late for the games.”


	8. Chapter 8

Hades, known to the Romans as Pluto, lived in the ominously named Underworld. In her reading, Quorra had come across numerous descriptions of this subterranean land, but one feature was constant. Darkness pervaded every step. The atmosphere was either scorching hot or freezing cold; sometimes there were rivers with vile waters that ate a person’s memories, that blazed with hatred and moaned in pain. The cries of the dead either echoed off of every stone wall or were eerily silent. But there was always darkness.

The examination room connected directly to Clu’s private apartments via a narrow corridor lit by a single length of fluorescent, goldenrod tubing in the walls. Quorra’s naked body glowed faintly as well, though it was hardly enough to cast a shadow; she was enervated, both by what she had been through and by the thought of what was to come.

Clu pulled her along, his grip on her hand unyielding. No words passed between them as they walked, leaving Quorra free to slip back and forth between reality and dreams. She wondered how Persephone felt, being dragged down from a world of sweetly perfumed flowers and warm sun to a windless realm of ice and silence. The surroundings might be lavish—Hades presided over every vein of gems and all the precious metals that glittered in the earth, and some variations told of long, golden chains heavy with diamonds, of gowns encrusted with sapphires and combs with handles worked in platinum.

But no flowers grew in the Underworld; the heat was unnatural, the sun a distant concept.

Quorra’s toes gripped plush, black carpet, but the pliant fibers gave her no comfort. Perhaps Persephone had felt the same when confronted with the apparent luxury in the death god’s kingdom. An iridescent opal was not a star; a flawless emerald was not a leaf.

A dress was laid out for her on Clu’s bed. The ruffled, shimmering skirt melted against the duvet. Tiny diamonds sparkled among the black folds; the dress looked like someone had cut the fabric from the midnight sky.

“Five minutes,” Clu said to her. He stepped outside, which was unusual—ordinarily he stood there and watched, stared, allowed her not even a sliver of private dignity. His fingers were curled into half-fists and his movements were halting as he left. He was embarrassed about earlier. The tenderness was not planned.

A tumbler of liquid energy was on the bureau. The drink was not quite what they had lived on while inside the Grid, as it contained vitamins and herbs rather than raw electrical power, but it had the same effect. Their semi-organic bodies processed nutrients with far greater efficiency than the Users’ did; two generous gulps and Quorra’s circuitry flared to life.

Despite the fresh vigor burning in her muscles, she dressed without enthusiasm. The dress flowed over her chest and hips like a shower of dark, filmy water, swirling delicately around her calves and ankles, twinkling against the pale glow of her circuits. She looked at herself in a tall mirror beside the door and felt annoyed.

She didn’t know how to sort out what had happened on that table. A violation was a violation, no matter how gently administered. Clu’s misery didn’t justify her own. He was a selfish, pathetic man and she should hate him. She should shatter the mirror in front of her and stab him in his newly acquired heart.

Flynn never spoke of Clu with anger in his voice. Frustration, sometimes. But mostly he was despondent, penitent.

“He’s me,” he had said, not just to Sam but to her as well, many times before.

“That can’t be true,” she had replied. “You’re warm and thoughtful and kind.”

“I had a good life,” he said. “A spoiled life, really. I was surrounded by people who smoothed me out. I was held accountable. I was taught. Clu never had any of that, because I didn’t realize that he needed it.”

Should she hate Flynn, then? The idea had entered her mind more than once, but she dismissed it easily; it buzzed around her head like a passing wasp. She dismissed it now, too. Hate was not a part of her emotional vocabulary. There was nothing in her atmosphere that could sustain it.

She wanted to deny this truth, but she could not; like Flynn, she thought of Clu and felt sorrow overwhelm her rage.

Quorra turned away from the mirror and went to open the door.


	9. Chapter 9

The games were held once a week, unless special circumstances arose, such as apprehension of a major rebel cell. Then they were held every day until none of the rebels were left alive. All of the contestants were criminals, though no particularly heinous offense was required to compete.

The combatants stood accused of anything from murder to petty theft to simply ‘agitation’. Quorra had thought the Users—built up as paragons of grace and virtue in her mind—would soundly reject these brutal sports, but many of them relished the games as much as the Basics had on the Grid, if not more so. Their cheers were especially lusty whenever an allegedly violent felon appeared on the floor, but all charges were suspect under Clu’s regime. Judgments were made on the spot by the arresting Blackguards, and to question them meant another body for the arena.

Quorra sat with Clu on a black leather couch, in a private box that overlooked the whole span of the game grid. Mounted display screens captured the action in detail for the spectators that filled the stadium; Quorra could hear the bass pulse of their chanting resonate through the box’s floor.

She had often spied on Clu’s games while in exile, feeling a thrill at the competition and then disgust at its inevitable, grisly conclusion. Flynn had explained that, originally, the games ended with a humbled winner and a gracious loser. Harmless, honorable exercise.

Every match fought under Clu’s rules was to the death, and watching them play out in the Users’ world was so much worse.

Programs on the Grid de-rezzed in a glittering burst of data; they collapsed like so much shattered glass and left no fragments in their wake. While the loss was no more senseless and tragic here as there, death in the User world was visceral, messy, and not always swift.

The identity discs cut into bone and flesh, severed arteries, shredded muscle. A well-placed strike to the torso did not result in immediate death; it broke the combatant’s body upon the arena floor, leaving him a screaming mass of disordered parts, writhing as his blood pooled around the sickly glistening remains of his bowels, his unfurled intestines. The light darkened in his eyes as he coughed greenish-black bile, and then he was still, no more than a lump of already decaying meat.

The first time Quorra saw death in this arena, she had learned what it was to vomit. Clu was unperturbed.

She could control herself now, although the experience never failed to stir up the cauldron of her stomach.

She could feel it now, roiling and churning in her gut. Beside her, Clu was arranged to his comfort: a half-reclining position on his side, one arm resting on his knee. Quorra’s hands were folded tightly in her lap; her legs were locked together and straight.

Persephone sat with Hades on the unforgiving throne of the Underworld and watched the endless procession of the dead. She heard their petitions, their wails and sobs, their anguished, pleading screams for clemency. She became pitiless, her heart as hard as the iron throne from which she reigned.

Quorra did not know if her own heart would eventually calcify in the same way. The best she could manage was a short-term detachment, a temporary escape into her mental realms, which were lush with all the stories she had accumulated over her many cycles in Flynn’s hideout. But even the stories bled through now; the parallels overwhelmed her, serving to intensify rather than dull the reality of her situation.

The first set of combatants streamed out into the arena, which was divided into a hexagon for the disc wars. Clu leaned forward, his body tense with anticipation.

A smooth, smug voice boomed out over the speaker system.

“Greetings, programs, users, and all fine citizens of our glorious system! We have quite the selection of criminals and malcontents assembled for you this evening.” Jarvis read his lines with relish and aplomb, sneering at every ‘user’ reference; he would visit their box shortly afterward in hopes of even a glance of approval from Clu, who bestowed such things according to his mood—which was to say, not nearly so often as Jarvis would have liked.

“You see, my fellow citizens,” Jarvis went on, pronouncing his words in a way that suggested he certainly did not consider himself like one of the assembled rabble, “not all of you have accepted the many gifts offered to you by our glorious leader. In fact,” and here his voice took on a shocked, sad tone, “some of you actually reject the kindness of our System Administrator and choose to work actively against his noble goals. Thus, as much as it pains him, we must—”

“Get on with it,” Clu growled from behind his helmet. The command, transmitted directly into Jarvis’s ears, caused a brief but significant moment of silence as Jarvis recalibrated himself after this fresh dismissal. He dropped all sense of drama from his speech and simply said, “These instigators are to answer for their crimes today. A loyal informant revealed the location of their terrorist cell. The Administrator extends his personal thanks to the Siren, Solene.”

A dozen men and women filled the hexagon, two apiece for each section. Quorra’s eyes widened, and she felt that Clu was looking directly at her, though the helmet still obscured his face.

He sat up, leaned over. The helmet receded; his lips were by her ear.

“Did you think she was your friend?” he whispered. His arm snaked around her waist, holding her tightly. “I’m all you’ve got, Q.”

She shuddered, and he bit into her earlobe as the first of the rebels decapitated his former comrade.


	10. Chapter 10

Eventually, only two combatants remained in the hexagon. The rest were dead by each other’s hands. If combatants refused to fight or engaged each other half-heartedly, the hexagon became a death trap, such that their next steps might lead to a spike through the side, their next breaths would poison their lungs, and so on, until both fighters perished regardless. Better to battle efficiently and ruthlessly so as to guarantee a fast, comparatively gentle end.

The last two circled each other. They were young men, both dark-haired, with fair skin and green eyes. Brothers, most likely.

Whenever Quorra imagined that she had no reserves of emotion left, a new wave rose up within her from some secret well, raw and consuming, stinging behind her eyes with the same ferocity she felt on the day of her birth.

“Why?” she whispered. “Why would you do this?”

Clu ran his fingers through her hair. “Because otherwise they’ll never learn.”

The older brother threw his disc; the younger one dodged. This continued for several rounds, until a warning bell sounded—get serious, or suffer the consequences.

The older boy tossed aside his disc; it clattered, inert, to the arena floor. He stepped forward, past his brother, who was paralyzed with fear and admiration.

“I have a message!” the boy shouted, and Quorra was struck by how young he was—no more than eighteen, by a human’s reckoning of time. His sibling’s body was even more loosely formed, with a plump face and skinny legs.

Clu’s gaze on Quorra broke.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, sounding friendly, paternal. “Let’s hear it.”

“It’s not for you,” the boy scowled. “It’s for Quorra! The resistance knows the truth, and we’re with you! The Flynns are with you! Be strong!”

Rage contorted Clu’s features. The boy and his brother were impaled by floor spikes in the next instant.

Quorra gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. A heavy, anxious silence pervaded the arena.

Jarvis spoke again, grimly, over the loud speakers. “And so we see the price of defiance.”

“Continue the games,” Clu said, but he had turned back to Quorra, his blue eyes smoldering with anger; his every muscle bristling. The boy had thought to give Quorra hope. Instead, he had doomed her.

The lightcycle races began. As his favorite contest, these were enough to distract Clu for the next few hours, but Quorra was not fooled into any sense of security. She passed the time with her mind blank, her soul and body rigid. She examined a ruffle in her dress’s skirt. She let nothing escape.

The return to his apartments was quiet, eerily so. Ordinarily he would expect her to discuss the highlights with him, as though she, too, enjoyed the gory bloodsport he had made of the games. That night he did not speak until they were back in the bedchambers.

Quorra lifted the straps of her dress, thinking that perhaps he had calmed down enough to let it go, that perhaps she could just rest now and hope for a better tomorrow.

Without warning, Clu seized her by the throat and slammed her, hard, against the wall by the door; she bit into her lip to keep from crying out as the bone cracked against the plaster.

“You’re mine,” he hissed. “Do you understand that? I took you. I took you from them, from him, and I will never give you back.”

Quorra was frightened, less by the words and more by his vice-like grip and open mouth, so close to hers that his rapid, desperate breathing stirred the tips of her hair.

He was feral in that moment, glassy-eyed and only half-aware of his actions. His teeth tore at the skin on her shoulders, and she crumbled, defenseless after struggling through so many long hours. She whimpered in pain, a high-pitched mewl that jarred Clu; his fingers went slack against her neck.

“I wouldn’t have to do that if you just understood,” he said. “Tell me. Tell me that you do.”

He stared at her, waiting, seeming almost hopeful.

“Understood what?” she said. Her whole body, from the back of her throat to the soles of her feet, ached.

Clu pulled her away from the wall and dragged her to the bed. He ripped her dress straps, and they hung, listless, against her arms.

It was too much. The day had been a war, not a battle, and she could no longer maintain her forces. She wanted to cry out, to meet his fury with her own, to scream that he was a pathetic, miserable bastard who would never know anything but loneliness, a tyrant with no heart, a beast that no one could ever possibly love.

His face as he hovered over her was disquieting, earnest and pleading. His palms dug into her collarbone. Quorra thought of slapping that expression away, but the shape of his lips, the soft set of his jaw, the mourning blue of his eyes stopped her. Clu was Flynn’s dark mirror, but he was a mirror nevertheless. 

Quorra started to cry.

Clu brushed away the tears with his thumbs and kissed her. Softly, he repeated, “That you’re mine.”

She nodded wordlessly and continued to sob. She shut her eyes as his body curled around hers, as his hands found purchase on her hips. In her mouth, she tasted pomegranate seeds.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was difficult to write, mostly because it contains such heinous themes and imagery, but the ideas and images for it would not let me alone until I wrote them down. I think pretty much every writer has experienced this problem from time to time, and it was definitely the motivating factor here. The worst part? I have yet MORE ideas for stories in this horrible AU :|


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